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Frustrated...

*I have a 11 month black lab female. Her OB has been solid except stay from long distances 50+ yards. She's ran doubles, through decoys. Land water land retrieves. Gun broke. So the last few days I've been working on stay from afar and out of sight mixing in fun bumpers. I was planning on starting force fetch saturday. But.....yesterday while retrieving a fun bumper she picked it up and ran the other other direction. I yelled here and she came halfway back dropped the bumper and layed down. Would not come to here or pick it back up. So I went and got the 30 ft checkcord back out and threw a short mark. She got it and ran again. I yelled here and gave her a jerk. I ende up reeling her in like when she was a pup. Today same thing she came halfway back after the jerk and layed down. Seemed like the jerk made it worse. She's never tested me like this. She's always brought the bumpers/birds straight to me. She has a very strong drive. I was training with a friend and his male broke and got my pups bumper. But Journey kept swimming in circles untill I threw another bumper. I know its not a lack of drive. This is our first major hiccup so I'm not sure what to do. Should I hold off on throwing bumpers for a few days and go ahead with FF. Or should I collar condition her? I hadn't originally planned to use a collar. Even though her OB has been solid maybe jumped the gun on training without a check cord. She has already went through her heat cycle 6 weeks ago so that's not it either. I'm pretty positive she's testing me so back up with OB continue with FF or collar condition is my question?

Some bitches after their heat turn brain dead. You could have one of those.

Howard NiemiYou really gotta be careful about how high a pedestal you put your method, your accomplishments, your dog on. There's usually someone who's done more, somewhere. And they may have used a different method than you did! Chris Atkinson 2013

I also posted on duckhuntingchat. After reading advice there I plan on going ahead with FF while reviewing basic OB with no retrieving. We'll see how it goes and maybe collar condition if necessary afterwards.

I also posted on duckhuntingchat. After reading advice there I plan on going ahead with FF while reviewing basic OB with no retrieving. We'll see how it goes and maybe collar condition if necessary afterwards.

Sounds like good advice. You can be sending lots of mixed signals right now while doing ff. Howard could also be correct. My pup lost her mind on first heat to the point where I had to stop training completely until it was over.

Did I understand correctly that her heat cycle was over six weeks ago? Sound like to me the issue is coming back, not getting the bumper. If it isn't a heat cycle issue, I would consider doing an early ecollar conditioning to "here". This should only take a few days. Then you can start ff and do the full ecollar conditioning iaw whatever program you are following.